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May 7, 2010

Swiss Unveil Water-cooling For Supercomputers

by Sam Savage

Swiss researchers have come up with a way to significantly reduce the carbon footprint caused by heat generated from supercomputers.

On Thursday, researchers from the Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich unveiled a new water-cooling system, called Aquasar, which will potentially cut down on excess power consumption that accounts for nearly half the energy a data center uses in powering air cooling systems necessary to prevent overheating.

"With Aquasar, we are achieving an important contribution for the development of a sustainable high performance processor and computer system," said project chief Dimos Poulikakos.

"In the future, how efficient each processor is by watt and by carbon dioxide gram would be determinant," added Poulikakos.

The system, which was co-developed with IBM, will cut the carbon footprint of the supercomputer by up to 85 percent, and save up to 33 tons of carbon dioxide emissions each year, according to the institute.